At long last Google this week confirmed what most of us in the industry knew already – meta-keywords are not used in organic search rankings. No real surprise there to be honest! Although, what those who still sell it as a service will do, we have no idea.
The announcement was made in a post on the Google Webmaster blog the other day and has triggered the usual speculation and discussion that surrounds Google’s regular dissemination of information, most of which involves the usual picking apart of the statement looking for hidden meaning. Perhaps Dan Brown’s latest book is stirring up the SEO industry in its week of release?
Our View on Meta-Keywords
Our view on keywords has always been simple and straightforward: don’t bother. We have seen no difference in ranking ability of two pages that possess and lack keywords respectively, none whatsoever. Likewise, we have never seen any impact on ranking come about as a result of meta-keyword tweaking.
Meta-Descriptions Make Sense
The post also mentions that Google has not used the Meta-Description field for ranking purposes for a number of years, however, our experience is that the description field can actually aid matters as it plays a crucial role in determining the click-through rate of a listing on a search engine ranking page (SERP). Our view is that the higher the CTR on a link, the likelier the associated page is to rank more highly. Furthermore, the higher the click-through rate of a page, the more traffic you’re likely to attract, so a well optimised and written description can really make a difference.
If you don’t include a meta-description then Google will select a snippet of text from your site, which might not work as well as a bespoke one. We use the meta-description field to display the Mackerel Media phone number on the SERPs page, as you’ll be able to see here. Neat eh?
Looking to the future, we can only hope that now Google has cleared keywords up, they’ll move swiftly on to link spam blogs, dubious paid link vendors and all the other fun issues that keep us busy. Hmm…perhaps we’re a little too optimistic.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Anna Green (web design) // Sep 24, 2009 at 9:04 am
Hello
I have heard talk of the meta descriptions not being of importance anymore for a while now. However is it still not of use to have that extra space where key words can be present? To back up any keyword rich text you may have. Or are the meta keywords discounted altogether and not even see by Google anymore?
2 Nick // Sep 24, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Hello Anna and thanks for another comment.
According to Google the meta-keywords aren’t used at all in ranking so there really is no point in using them.
You may find that other smaller search engines use them as a signal, but given the importance of Google in the market, we take our lead from them.
3 Anna Green (web design) // Sep 25, 2009 at 8:47 am
Thanks for your fast response, it has been most useful. I will keep an eye on your blog for further useful information.
Anna
4 Donald Mackenzie // Oct 8, 2009 at 1:36 pm
What is your view of LSI and silo structured web design?
Do you think this is a better approach for content development and ranking improvements?
Donald
5 Nick // Oct 10, 2009 at 10:38 am
Donald – Thanks a lot for your comment.
I’m generally in favour of taking a ‘silo’ approach to content inasmuch as if you approached building content without considering search engines, it’s the way you’d probably do it.
As an example, if you were creating a web site about bagpiping and wanted it to be the best bagpiping site in the world, you’d think carefully about all the different topics you’d write about and you’d think about how best to organise the content so that it’s easy for users to follow. You’d probably end up creating silos for different types of related content such as ‘History of Bagpiping’, ‘Bagpipes’, ‘Bagpipers’, ‘Bagpipe Bands’ and so on.
As regards LSI, it’s not something we think about. Rather, when we create content we don’t focus on simple repetition of keywords, but on writing useful, interesting and varied content that captures the attention of users and search engines.
Nick
6 Donald Mackenzie // Oct 12, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Thanks Nick, thats really good advice.
My site is ranked No1 for the search phrase, “wedding piper”. I managed to obtain the ranking by getting links to point back at the home page with the keywords in the anchor text.
However I do need to drive much more traffic to the site to convert impressions into leads
Any good ideas? Is this something you guys do?
Donald
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